The Michie Building refurbishment project substantially re-organises all internal spaces and services and extends 3 levels of the building to the west. The refurbishment improves the amenity of the building transforming highly partitioned office space and lightless corridors to floor plates with better access to light and views reinforcing the various faculty communities.
The three storey extension increases the available area for new highly visible public accessible spaces. The Anthropology Museum is now located at the ground floor with its entrance associated with the aboriginal carved rock artifacts. Ten new teaching and learning spaces at the Great Court level as well as the Antiquities Museum create a dynamic highly accessible facility, from the key campus space. Teaching spaces within the building build on Wilson Architects body of researched education design spaces.
The extension, much smaller than Hennessey and Henessey's original unbuilt plan for Michie, is respectful to the proportions and language of the stone clad high rise building but is clearly distinct in its materiality and scale. This response is aligned to the DERM Heritage objectives and aligns with the Burra Charter which defines the basic principles and procedures to be followed in the conservation of Australian heritage places.
A light weight colour anodised screen reduces the heat load to its western aligned elevation whilst moderating the impact of the buildings mass. Hennessy and Hennessy original scheme for the Michie Building included a large extension to the western side of the building which was never built. The addition of the proposed extension limits impact by an envelope that respects the visual alignment set up with the northern approach to the Biological Sciences Library.
Our approach to the extension was to avoid replicating the stone clad Michie Building but at the same time set up a language that would still have some relationship to the Michie Building through abstracted elements.
